Rick Bayless training low-income students for food-biz careers

Celebrity chef Rick Bayless will open a culinary training program for low-income students at the Hatchery Chicago, a nonprofit food and business incubator on Chicago's West Side slated to open in fall 2018.

"I believe this program can help surmount two big challenges in the city—lack of cooks to fill our restaurants' kitchens and a lack of both solid preparation and career opportunities for the youth of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods," Bayless said in a statement.

The Hatchery offers shared commercial kitchen space and classrooms, and aims to nurture small food businesses and prepare high school and college-age students for careers in the culinary industry. Through his program, Bayless will teach students basic knife work, cooking techniques and product identification. Students from East Garfield Park will be given a priority for enrollment, says Casey Cora, spokesman for Frontera restaurants.

"The vision is a dozen or two dozen (students) at a time," Cora says. Bayless is solidifying the curriculum, the number of hours required and what students will pay to register for the training, Cora says. He offered that registration will be nominal—"hundreds of dollars"— and the program will last a few months and several sessions will be held throughout the year. "They didn't want to make it free so maybe there's potential for abuse, and then people wouldn't care so much," Cora says.

Several notable Chicago chefs will review Bayless' curriculum and lead classes, including Grant Achatz, the most Michelin-starred chef in Chicago; Stephanie Izard of the Girl & the Goat; and Paul Kahan of Blackbird, which earned a Michelin star in 2017. Some chefs will also offer internships in their kitchens. Students must successfully complete a one-month internship to graduate from Bayless' program.

"If you look at the culinary firepower on that list, the point is we wanted to put stars in these students eyes," Cora says. "We didn't want to send them to fast-food jobs."

ConAgra and Kellogg are investing an undisclosed sum to build the Hatchery, a joint venture by microfinance lender Accion Chicago and small business incubator Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago. "This training program will help prepare our job seekers to work with these growing companies and in some of the most creative kitchens in the world," Brad McConnell, CEO of Accion Chicago, in a statement.

The $34 million project has also received about $8 million from the city, mostly through tax increment financing, to build the 67,000-square foot building, according to The Chicago Tribune. The Hatchery will bring about 150 new jobs to East Garfield Park in the first year and up to 900 jobs over the first five years, according to the city. Mayor Rahm Emanuel broke ground on the project this morning.

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